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About the Exhibition
Opening reception, one-night drinking and role playing event
(free drinks!): Friday, June 5, 6 - 8 pm
Second incarnation (drinking and role-palying event):
Friday, July 3, 6 - 8 pm
In the July 3 version of the installation, the gallery
will be under riot conditions. With overturned cars and scattered
fake bricks for throwing, the Basekamp reenacts some of the
conditions of May of ’68 or the Seattle protests of
‘99.
First enacted in 1999, The Hegemonic Bar is a social experiment
and drinking game about class and money. Hegemony is generically
defined as predominance (the greek hegemon, meaning leader),
and is generally used to signify some form of power struggle
and hierarchy, between people of one class, gender, orientation,
physiognomy, race, nationality etc, and another.
The Hegemonic Bar is fragmented into 3 separate rooms, reflecting
a generic 3 class system of lower, middle, and upper in order
to generally signify class stratification. The rooms themselves
increase in elevation as they decrease in scale, each with
its appropriate decor, music, drink, and price. As individuals
enter the door, they are classed at random, and given a proportionate
amount of money to spend at the bar appropriate to their class.
The amount of money increases as the number of individuals
decreases, proportionately from lower, to middle, to upper.
(There will also be non-alcoholic versions of each house drink
available, for those who are taking medication, driving, operating
heavy machinery, or underage).
The installation focuses on class hierarchy as an example of hegemony, through the form of a bar. It self consciously simplifies the complexities of oppression and hegemony as a whole, for the sake of a participatory and partly parodic performance. The blatant reduction of complete representation, mixed with alcohol, functions to avoid pretension and apprehension in conversation, while the stage is set for a potential saternalian role reversal and spontaneous enactments of class mobility. Although the role play can be seen as cathartic, and the suggestion of mobility as idealistic, the framed superstructure of the bar remains firmly intact, and the festival remains contained within the boundaries of the fabricated installation and the paradigms of the participants.
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